📍REAL ACTION, NOT HYPE WILL CLEAN DELHI’S AIR !

 📍REAL ACTION, NOT HYPE WILL CLEAN DELHI’S AIR !

A newspaper headline about cleaning Delhi’s air beguiled me into thinking the government had finally woken up to do something about the national capital’s life threatening pollution. But when I look below the headlines, I am struck by the utter absurdity of the proposed program. 

The Delhi administration has unveiled a ₹104-cr pilot project to install outdoor air purifiers and mist-based scrubbers across 40 designated zones. Outsourced to private operators, this program promises a 20% reduction in the levels of the worst offenders, the PM 10 and PM 2.5 pollutants. 

If ever there was a problem made to stand on its head by the proposed solution, this is it. No, here is not an effort to cut the levels of polluting emissions at source, rather, it is an exercise aimed to scrub the city’s air after it has been heavily laden with pollutants! 

Why can’t the ₹104-cr be spent on reducing pollution instead of bolting the stable doors after the horse has fled ? The reasons for Delhi’s pollution are well known. Vehicular emissions are the main cause. According to 2024 data, 1,800 new vehicles were registered daily in Delhi. At over 1.5 crore, the number of registered vehicles in Delhi exceeded the total number of vehicles in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai combined. 

Why are we not limiting vehicles and introducing public transport? Why are we not cracking down on construction dust and mountains of construction waste strewn across the city? Using the old tactic of sensational headlines and misleading messages is not going to clean Delhi’s nauseous air. Only honest, committed action will.

📍UNDER WATER AI DATA CENTERS!

 📍UNDER WATER AI DATA CENTERS!

They don’t let up, do they? AI data centers were found to be hugely disruptive for communities, gobbling their electricity and soaking up their water, leaving little or nothing for the people. So people began to protest and blocked such data centers to be installed in their areas. So what do the money bags behind these mega size data centres do? They plan to install them under water.

Since AI data centers consume very large amounts of water for cooling, DeepGreen Holdings LLC, a US based developer plans to set up two underwater data centers. One in Cook Inlet, Alaska, home to endangered beluga whales, and another in the Gulf of Maine, which is the feeding ground for a shrinking population of North Atlantic right whales.

The proposed underwater data centers smack in the middle of whale territory will be extremely damaging for the animals. The constant thrumming noise would upset the beluga whales who are extremely sensitive to sound and the heat generated by these centers would disturb the fish and plankton populations on which the two whale species feed.

As in all greedy, thoughtless development projects, Nature takes a beating.

According to recent reports, yet another  example of the aggressive approach of capitalism to get its way come what may, comes from Finland. Google went ahead and cleared 1300 acres of forest land, felling about 400,000 trees for its planned data centres BEFORE any permits were received or mandatory environmental impact assessments conducted. The government ordered the work to be halted. 

Public anger and political criticism over the country's growing datacentre industry forced Google to publicly apologize for procedural failures and the illegal land clearance and tree felling.The sheer arrogance of Google’s action is breath taking and its brazen actions have started a debate in Finland over the expansion of datacentres.

The News: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/world/us/google-faces-backlash-in-finland-after-cutting-down-400000-trees-for-data-center-projects/articleshow/135243774.cms

📌 Too risky to tolerate!

(from the archives)

Small farmers distribute risk and harvest different things from different sources. Heribicide Tolerant crops strike at the very root of such proven strategies relying on diversity, writes Suman Sahai.

The seed producer Monsanto India Ltd has sought regulatory approval in India to sell its genetically modified (GM) corn that is tolerant to herbicides. Herbicide tolerant (HT) crops are genetically engineered crops which contain genes that allow them to resist the application of herbicides - the chemicals that kill weeds as well as all other plants except the ones that are genetically engineered. The logic of creating HT plants is to have crops that will remain unharmed when chemicals are applied for weed control.

But there is more. HT plants can only be used together with the specific herbicides that they are programmed for. These are the company’s proprietary herbicides, so the farmer who buys HT seeds from a company also has to buy the company’s matched herbicide. This means double profits for the company, but are there benefits for the farmer as well?

A different scenario

Controlling weeds by using chemicals like herbicides becomes necessary in the large-landholding, labour starved agricultural conditions in industrial countries. In developing countries like India weeds are controlled manually. Farm operations like weeding, sowing, harvesting, threshing and winnowing are the key sources of rural employment, especially for women.The herbicide tolerance trait is essentially a labour saving and hence also a labour displacing trait . In a labour-surplus country like India, it will have disastrous economic implications. The Agbiotech Task Force chaired by M S Swaminathan has warned against introducing labour displacing technologies like herbicide tolerance.

The HT trait must also be seen in the context of how ‘weeds’ are perceived and used in India. They are not considered useless plants as in the west but have several useful functions critical to the well being of rural communities. Plants collected as weeds fulfil two important nutritional roles. They are largely nutritious leafy greens, like Chaulai, Bathua and Sunsuni saag which are a valued and free source of nutrition in the family’s diet. A typical rice field in India (or Bangladesh) would yield at least twenty to thirty types of leafy greens over the cropping season. This access to free nutrition is one of the reasons why nutritional status is better among the rural poor than among the urban poor who have to buy all their food.

Controlling weeds by using chemicals like herbicides becomes necessary in the large-landholding, labour starved agricultural conditions in industrial countries. In developing countries like India weeds are controlled manually.

Those plants that are not eaten by the family, serve as fodder for the livestock that rural families maintain as additional income sources. India is a fodder starved country and has a very large livestock population. Free range grazing and fodder from fields is a great support to maintaining livestock. If rural families had to buy all the fodder they needed to maintain their animals, many would not be able to afford livestock and would have to forego the extra income.

In addition to the supplementary food and fodder that they provide, so called weeds are also the medicinal plants that rural families depend on for the health and veterinary care needs of themselves and their animals. The introduction of herbicide tolerant crops with accompanying herbicide use would kill the surrounding vegetation and deprive rural communities of the medicinal plants which form the basis of indigenous healing traditions. It is acknowledged by the World Health Organisation that over 80 per cent of rural communities across the world are dependent on medicinal plants and indigenous systems of medicine. Destroying the vegetation around crop fields would deprive village communities of crucial health care opportunities especially in a situation where the formal system does not adequately address their health and veterinary requirements.

Apart from this, using herbicide tolerant crops would make it impossible to plant crops on the fields’ borders and the raised bunds, as is done in many parts of India and Asia for additional food and for increasing farm incomes. Typically, farmers will grow crops like yams, ginger or vegetables on the bunds surrounding rice fields. Thus two or three kinds of produce are available from the field in the same season. This advantage would be lost if the package of herbicide tolerant crop varieties and tailored herbicides would be implemented.

In addition, the practice of intercropping and mixed farming would suffer a setback. Traditionally farmers plant more than one crop in the field. Sugar cane for instance is interspersed with lentils or mustard and it is not uncommon to find farmers planting mustard along with wheat, to be harvested one after the other or linseed together with lentils. Mixed cropping is widely practiced, with differing combinations of crops depending on the region.

Too risky

Destroying useful biodiversity so that Monsanto can plant its proprietary GM crop goes against the interests of the rural community. But the big corporations like Monsanto have no business interest in this biodiversity, so they do not care if it is destroyed while they are pushing their own seeds. The rural community, however, stands to lose from crops that will entail the killing of all the biodiversity in the vicinity of HT crop fields.

The socio-economic impact of introducing herbicide tolerant crops in India is negative. HT crops offer no advantages to consumers. As for farmers, losing risk minimising options like mixed cropping or bund planting, will affect farm families adversely, as will the loss of wage labour from weeding. Losing useful flora as food and fodder will add a financial burden if these have to be made up from the market.

The loss of surplus income from livestock or the loss of health care options resulting from the loss of medicinal plants that are used for home treatments and veterinary care will have an impact on the conomic status of the family. Less money may mean pulling out a girl child from the school, less money for school books or fewer clothes. This is why small farmers do not put all their eggs in one basket. They have developed a diversified economy that distributes risk and allows them to harvest different things from different sources . Heribicide Tolerant crops strike at the very root of such valuable and proven strategies relying on diversity.

This article appeared in India Together on 24 July 2009 -https://indiatogether.org/htweeds-agriculture/

📍Melting Arctic, Warming Planet!

 📍Melting Arctic, Warming Planet!

For many thousands of years plants and animals that died were frozen in the Arctic ice. But now the Arctic region is melting….and melting four times faster than the rest of the planet. With the melting of the permafrost, the ice preserved plants and animals have started to decompose, generating methane and carbon dioxide, two major greenhouse gases (GHG) causing global warming.

It is estimated that the amount of carbon frozen in the Arctic permafrost is three times what is in the air already. With the melting of the ice, this carbon is being released into the atmosphere, pushing up the GHG concentrations.

Studies project that by the end of this century, the gases released from the permafrost will add approximately 0.5 degree Celsius to the warming already being caused by the use of fossil fuels. This does not bode well for the state of the planet.

📍 98% Shortfall in Green Mission & Deforestation Amid Climate Change!

📍 98% Shortfall in Green Mission & Deforestation Amid Climate Change!

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India told Parliament in August 2026 that the government has failed to meet its targets to increase and improve forest cover in India, by nearly 98 per cent. 

South Asia is one of the regions most vulnerable to the global climate crisis. The World Bank’s South Asia Climate Change Roadmap warns that annual economic losses could hit $160 billion by 2030 in the region, heavily impacting poor families and worsening food insecurity. The Bank also estimates that over the past two decades more than 750 million people in South Asia have been affected by at least one climate-related disaster.

For a region so vulnerable to climate change, forests, a crucial asset for any nation, should be at the centre of our adaptation strategies. They hold water, protect soil, moderate temperatures, store carbon and provide suitable habitats for an extraordinary range of plants animals, microbes. For millions of people, particularly forest-dependent communities, they are also a source of food, fuel, medicine and livelihoods. So, the obvious policy response should be to protect existing forests and increase green cover.

Recognising the climate catastrophe staring at us, The Government of India formulated the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) 18 years ago in 2008. Of the eight missions flagged for urgent action to cope with climate change, an important one was the Green India Mission (GIM). The focus of the GIM is on restoring, enhancing and protecting, the country’s diminishing forest and tree cover. Three specific targets were laid down: Increase forest and tree cover on five million hectares; Improve the quality of the forest and its species diversity on another five million hectares and Support and Supplement the forest-based livelihoods of the roughly three million households of forest dwelling communities. 

We are failing on all fronts of the Green India Mission. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s performance audit of the Green India Mission, tabled in Parliament in August 2026, shows just how large the gap is between stated goals and what has been achieved. The GIM had set a target of increasing forest cover by 1.4 million hectares between 2015-16 and 2024-25. The actual increase was only about 0.03 million hectares, a 97.57% shortfall. This embarrassing figure reveals the absolute and total failure on the part of those whose job it was to use the allotted funds to meet the targets of the National Mission to increase forest cover. The story is similar when it comes to improving the quality of existing forests. The CAG found a shortfall of nearly 92%. This is not just inefficiency; it is a catastrophic inability to recognise the gravity of the climate crisis and its consequences.

Why did this happen? The CAG audit is scathing, pointing to the i) Failure to use available funds with states utilising just half of the money available; ii) Lack of convergence between programs and deficient monitoring leading to structural gaps; iii) Failure to secure the massive fund proposed for the second phase and inappropriate selection of landscapes for afforestation. 

In this backdrop, the scale of government sanctioned deforestation, the cutting down of large tracts of forest for so called ‘development’ is baffling. Government data shows that between April 2023, and March 2026, 71,023.30 hectares of forest land was approved for diversion to non-forestry purposes across India. Madhya Pradesh accounted for 19,432 hectares, Odisha 8,966 hectares, Arunachal Pradesh 7,335 hectares, Jharkhand 5,410 hectares and Chhattisgarh 4,219 hectares. 

Mining and stone quarrying accounted for the largest share of 16,463 hectares. Hydroelectric and irrigation projects accounted for another 14,294 hectares, while roads accounted for 12,715 hectares. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. Every hectare represents a piece of an ecosystem, and often a landscape that has taken decades, sometimes centuries, to evolve. 

Look at Hasdeo in Chhattisgarh. The Hasdeo-Arand forest in North Chhattisgarh is one of the most important forest patches of Central India, popularly referred to as the lungs of Central India. The Adani Parsa East and Kente Basan (PEKB) coal mine is located in this biodiversity-rich region. Approximately 4.48 lakh trees are slated to be cut down in phases. Around 1,013 hectares of closed canopy forest has already been cleared and the government has also given in-principle clearance for the felling of trees in 1,742.6 hectares for the Kente Extension coal block. 

In the misguided project to link the Ken and Betwa rivers in Madhya Pradesh, 9,000 hectares including 5,761 hectares of forest land will be submerged. This will involve killing approximately 215,875 trees. Not just that, the project will also claim over 4,000 hectares of the densely forested Panna Tiger Reserve and 1,314 hectares of its buffer zone. The highway widening construction activity linking the Char Dhams of Uttarakhand (Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri) has already claimed nearly 60,000 trees. 

These are just some examples. Looming in the future is the mega project to destroy the biosphere of the environmentally unique and fragile Great Nicobar island. A commercial hub including an airport, an international transshipment terminal, a township and associated infrastructure is to be built for which rainforests will be slashed and biodiversity rich indigenous lands will be appropriated. According to government records, approval has already been given for the diversion of 130.75 sq km of forest land. 

The CAG’s findings on the Green India Mission should not be seen merely as another story of a failed government programme. The larger question is about the coherence of our environment policy. On one side, we recognise forests as critical to climate resilience. On the other, we continue to divert existing forests for mining, infrastructure and so-called development projects. Both development and environmental protection are necessary. But development cannot mean treating natural forests as expendable, interchangeable pieces of land. The real test of India's climate policy will not be the number of saplings planted for a photograph. It will be whether the mature forests that have survived for generations are still standing when the next heatwave, drought, flood or extreme rainfall arrives.

this article appeared in The Asian Age on 03 Oct 26 : https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai98-shortfall-in-green-mission-deforestation-amid-climate-change-1992851

📌 What's that on your plate?

(from the archives)

Genetically engineered foods are blurring the line between acceptable and taboo sources of food for many people. This advance of technology is taking place without the informed consent of the consumers, and additionally raises questions about the safety of such foods and the labeling standards that ought to be adopted, writes Suman Sahai.

Genetic engineering has created new possibilities in the agriculture sector. By transferring genes from one organism to another, a number of genetically engineered (GE) foods are being developed that cannot be developed in nature. The development of such GE foods has raised uncomfortable questions about the nature of foods that are being introduced into the food chain by the corporations that are the principal proponents of genetically engineered products.

The food that people eat is conditioned by the religious, social and cultural context of individuals and communities. Food is also such a personal thing and so integral to the survival of the human species that there are strong likes and dislikes associated with it and strong cultural taboos are not uncommon in communities. Vegetarians will not eat meat in any form, and Hindus, for instance, consider the eating of beef a sacrilege. With new technologies, however, scientists are producing a range of strange, unnatural foods that blur the conventional distinctions that people have made - like fish with tomato genes in it or rice engineered to produce pig vaccines. Many foods are being engineered with human genes … is that acceptable, or does it recall cannibalism? Do vegetarians want aloo tamatar ki sabzi with some fish genes in it? Or how about some fish ketchup on pakoras? What if the rice in your thali is contaminated with rice that is engineered to produce pig vaccines?

This problem is particularly troubling because it is impossible to segregate rice with pig vaccines from normal rice, or food corn from corn engineered to produce drugs for pigs. Past experience has shown that these kinds of engineered crops cannot be kept segregated and will almost always land up in the food chain. The Starlink Corn in the US containing an allergen was forbidden for human use and was released only for animal feed. But it got mixed up in food corn and landed up in corn products in Japan, UK, Canada and other countries in Europe. The unlicensed GE rice of Bayer has escaped from trial plots which were closed down as far back as 2001 in the US and is being detected in countries in Europe and in New Zealand now, in 2006. Similarly, unapproved GE rice from trial plots in China has found its way into the food chain and is showing up in Europe.

Radically altered foods, developed so recently and with so little testing, cannot be considered safe as food.

The creation of these bizarre foods can be linked directly to the entry of large corporations into agriculture biotechnology and food production. Corporations create foods that can be patented, not necessarily those that solve any real problems in agriculture, or those are geared to address food security. But why should such foods be produced? So that companies can claim them as inventions and take out patents on them? Who asked us, the consumers? Who has determined that these kinds of unnatural foods will be produced and introduced into our food chain, whether by accident or design? Who asked us if we want to eat tomatoes that had been engineered with fish genes or whether we are willing to take the risk of having rice with pig vaccines getting mixed up with our rice?

The question of ‘unnatural’ foods and ‘taboo’ foods is a sensitive issue. People have strong cultural and religious conditioning and beliefs regarding the food they are willing to eat. Introducing foods containing genes from sources that are culturally or religiously prohibited, and that too without clearly labelling them as such, is unethical and unacceptable. Corporations are alert to this stance, and continuously lobby against any kind of labeling that might give away the true origins of the foods they sell.

Safety

Apart from this, is the question of safety. You have become familiar with Bt cotton and the problems associated with it, leading to acute farmer distress. Bt cotton is a genetically engineered plant designed to make the crop resistant to pests such as the bollworm. The seeds are created by inserting a gene construct containing the toxin producing gene (called Cry1Ac) from a naturally occurring soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) into the cotton plant. Once the Bt gene starts producing the toxin inside the plant, the plant creates its own toxin to kill the pests. In India trials for Bt brinjal, Bt bhindi, Bt tomato, Bt cauliflower, Bt cabbage and Bt rice are under way. Do we want to eat foods that contain genes that produce toxins?

Radically altered foods, developed so recently and with so little testing, cannot be considered safe as food. Natural foods have been domesticated over hundreds, if not thousands of years. Their drawbacks have been detected and their safety established. They are considered safe foods for that reason. That cannot be said for genetically engineered foods which are not even 10 years old.

A little of this, a little of that

Here are some examples of foods that are currently being researched, and may one day turn up on our plates:

Pig genes in rice: Three kinds of pig genes are being put into the rice plant Nihonbare in Japan.These rice plants manage to survive the application of plant killing herbicides.

Human genes in rice: Japanese researchers have inserted a gene from the human liver into rice to enable it to digest pesticides and industrial chemicals. The gene makes an enzyme, code-named CPY2B6, which can break down harmful chemicals in the body. An American company called Applied Phytologics is producing rice genetically engineered with two human genes lactoferrin and lysozyme, to protect plants against fungal and animal pests. Ventria Bioscience in California is developing rice containing human genes to produce the proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme . This genetically engineered rice is to be used as a treatment for diarrhoea.

Other strange foods

• Washington State University is testing barley altered with human genes for lactoferrin, lysozyme, antitrypsin and antithrombin.
• Meristem Therapeutics company in France is field testing maize genetically engineered with human lactoferrin genes
• Genes from the rabies virus have been inserted into tomatoes to produce an edible vaccine
• The U.S. company Prodigene was found to contaminate soybean with a GE corn engineered to produce an experimental pig vaccine, and was fined.
• Researchers at the University of Guelph (Canada) have produced the genetically engineered Enviropig to excrete less phosphate in its dung.
• Human genes to produce insulin and vaccines are being put into crops like corn, tomato and rice

This article appeared in India Together on 02 February 2007 -https://indiatogether.org/crossgene-opinions/